XCOM: Enemy Unknown ‘more tactical than original’, says producer

XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s lead producer Jake Solomon has told VG247 why he feels the game is more tactical than Julian Gollop’s original, UFO: Enemy Unknown. He also stressed that he doesn’t want to upset fans of the original by saying that, so hear him out first.

Speaking with VG247 at gamescom last week, Solomon explained why he felt the new game is more tactical, “The original game wasn’t as tactical as this game. I mean, it was tactical in its own way, but we have things like abilities an explicit cover system, bonuses for elevation, perks, passive perks and we just put a big tactical layer over the experience.”

“The original game would do things like having enemies being able to see further than you,” Solomon continued, “so they would just shoot you from behind the fog of war. These were things that, at first you might not have understood, but in our game everything is very clear.”

Solomon added, “With the original game – I know how it works – but people typically didn’t understand why they were getting shot. That created huge amounts of tension in the original game, and put you in the dark – literally in the dark. You could take a step, get shot and be like ‘who the f**k was that?'”

“With our game we said, ‘it has to be tactical, but it also has to be fair’, as tactical games that aren’t fair, just aren’t tactical. We started moving out XCOM game toward fairness and that got us worried and thinking , ‘well hold on, is this still tense?'”

“It was a big struggle throughout development to give a sense of risk and tension. Because in the original you could run around a corner and be like, ‘aw f**k, there’s some guy standing there and now he’s going to shoot me.’ We wanted to make sure the game was tactical but that there was still a chance to gamble.”

What do you think based on what you’ve seen of XCOM: Enemy Unknown so far? Does it look more tactical than UFO: Enemy Unknown, or can the original still not be beat?

Here’s what you’ve been waiting for since you first fell in love with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and regretted having to leave it at home every day; the Firaxis strategy gem is headed to iPad and iPhone, with no feature left behind.